


The Only Thing

by winterbaby (anticholinesterase)



Category: Given (Anime), Given (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Ritsuka is best boy, Slow Burn, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29966733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticholinesterase/pseuds/winterbaby
Summary: Ritsuka doesn't have a Soulmate. Plain and simple. At least that's the conclusion he is coming to at the age of 14 and having experienced no Callings so far in his life.Until a normal day like any other shakes him to his core and changes everything.Ritsuka doesn't have a Soulmate. Right?•A study in Soulmates, their lack thereof, dysfunctional relationships and grief.
Relationships: Kaji Akihiko/Murata Ugetsu, Kaji Akihiko/Nakayama Haruki, Satou Mafuyu/Uenoyama Ritsuka
Kudos: 20





	1. The Only Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! This is my first Given fic ♥
> 
> I love Soulmate AUs, but more than anything, I love ~~angst~~ complex characters with complicated relationships. And isn't Kizu just serving us an all-you-can-eat buffet with Given?
> 
> I wanted to try my hand at running with this popular trope but subverting it to fit the complexity of Given's many relationships. 
> 
> I'm hoping you guys appreciate this spin. Stick around and tell me your thoughts, if you will (:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Do I care if I despise this, nothing else matters, I know  
>  In a veil of great disguises, how do I live with your ghost?  
> Should I tear my eyes out now?  
> Everything I see returns to you somehow  
> Should I tear my heart out now?  
> Everything I feel returns to you somehow  
> I want to save you from your sorrow"_
> 
> -The Only Thing by Sufjan Stevens

It started out like any other day in the 14 years of Ritsuka’s life.

He wakes up to the sound of Yayoi banging charmingly at his door with _“Wake up already, what the hell. Do you think you will browbeat school into following your own schedule if you continue to be late to it?”_ which was a quite common recurrence in their relationship, honestly.

Ritsuka rubs his eyes with the knuckles of a hand and stares quietly at the ceiling, waiting for his soul to reconnect to the body so that he can join the land of the living. He unglues a loose notebook page that was stuck to his cheek, probably from sleeping while scribbling down some chord progression for the guitar. He wipes off some drool that connected cheek to cellulose, tries to salvage the notes for later analysis. Again, not an unheard occurrence for him either.

He hears Yayoi’s heavy steps on the corridor, but they seem to be kitchen-bound instead of making Ritsuka’s life a living hell-bound. That would only buy him 5 minutes at most in morning-Yayoi-time. He lets out a dragged out breath but steels himself, trying to gather strength for the final term of his last middle school year.

When he finally manages to get himself situated at the dining table, Yayoi is already done with her breakfast, but remains hunched over herself, fast typing something maniac on her phone at a dating app she had downloaded just last week.

He silently goes to the rice cooker as he tries to ignore the constant thrumming of messages popping up on her phone. It’s hard to do so since the message notifications are comprised of a high-pitched glitter sound. Well. If glitter produces sound, that is, that’s what it would sound like. You could say it’s annoying.

Ritsuka has hidden her phone to make the drone stop on more than one occasion. The retribution was dire, though, when he found out in the most awfully public way that she had changed the sound of _his own_ notifications to the intro theme of the Teletubbies. To this day Itaya’s rendition of the baby’s laugh just might trigger something akin to PTSD in him.

It was an ever present conundrum in his life that while Yayoi had been aware of the presence of her soulmate ever since Ritsuka could remember, honestly, she didn’t seem frustrated with the stream of guys she had gone through already in the quest to ultimately find them. She has been going through the process of dating thoroughly but cheerfully, yet another aspect of her personality that managed to bypass Ritsuka completely.

“Quick, Ritsuka, tell me the name of one of those stupid indie bands you like that no one’s ever heard of. I have a guy to impress here.”

Ritsuka rolls his eyes as he serves his own bowl of rice but indulges her like always, the pushover of a brother that he knows he sadly is. Besides, any situation that allows him to school these heathens on decent music is a situation Ritsuka will gladly take. If only so that the ratio of crappy pop music blasting from Yayoi’s bedroom just adjacent to his turns down a notch. One can only hope.

He wishes this dude she’s been obsessing over a week has a better musical taste than the previous. Yeah, the last one was a Ska enthusiast. _Ska_. Ritsuka still has nightmares about it.

“You are still talking to that- what’s his face, Kageyama? Hinata? You know, the one that gets a nosebleed every time you guys Facetime?”

“ _Tanaka_.” She says with a long suffering sigh “And no, that’s so last week, try to keep up, Ue-chan.”

He kicks her feet under the table for the nickname and she kicks right back, double the force, zero lady-like finesse. Seriously, how she manages to get so many men interested in her it’s beyond him. Not that he knows, really, how these things go. Well. He is not blind, obviously, life in middle school is like an all time zoo experience, he has observed plenty of hormone soup teenagers in their natural habitat being wildly hormonal in their decisions. Soulmates and their Calls and their recognition are Top 1 topic of conversations among them. But Muggle dating too is a quite popular occurrence. Especially the ones that have figured out by now that their Soulmate is not their classmate and that it will take longer, and they will have to work harder to find them.

“Whatever. Tanaka, then.”

Yayoi left a high pitched distressed sound and dragged her long hair over her shoulder, starting to stress-braid it.

“Yeah, absolutely not, we were utterly incompatible. He was like, the opposite of my soulmate. Like my soulfoe. I think the area in my brain reserved for soulmate communication actually shrunk a bit when I met with him.”

Ritsuka hums a vaguely interested sound as he finishes off his plate and heads to the sink to wash the dishes. Normally he would do everything not to broach this subject with anyone ever, but.

“And yet you somehow still have a soulmate waiting for you out there…”

It sounds bitter even to his own ears, but he can’t help but be a bit bitter. But Ritsuka, well. He simply can’t understand these things. He’s never felt the Calling of a soulmate before. He never saw much of the appeal of the Muggle dating without commitment either. It doesn’t make sense to him. If soulmates are destined to find each other, why on earth would they waste their time with someone who lacks compatibility?

Yayoi rolls her eyes but smiles fondly at him.

“It’s how it is with soulmates that were born together, baby brother. There wasn’t even a time when their presence wasn’t there. I can’t even remember the first time I Felt them. I know they are out there, I can feel them constantly, under my skin. Maybe not the coherent speech of bonded soulmate Calls or detailed hues of emotion like some people have, but like…a constant thrumming, you know? Or a lingering presence just outside my field of vision.”

The thing is…Ritsuka doesn’t know. And it’s been dawning on him with a sense of horror that he just might be on the wrong end of the bell curve distribution. For all the propaganda and information on Soulmate Recognition, he doesn’t seem to recall any of the tell-tale signs of the presence of a soulmate in his life, not once. He never felt the Calling either, not one ounce of it.

It’s something he has been keeping to himself for about 2 years now, when he came to realize everyone around him seemed to have experienced at least some kind of Calling with their soulmates. Even the smallest connection. Anything.

He wonders if his soulmate lives so far away that they are outside the radar of any signaling. He has researched this before at 4 am in a fit of anxiety, it happens. Soulmates tend to come from the same community, but if, say, close families move abroad and have children, possible soulmates can exist an ocean apart. _It can happen_ , there are reports of it.

And then-He wonders if he just doesn’t have a soulmate at all. If he was just born with a defect, created with a missing piece, destined for lack of true fulfillment. Maybe that’s the future that awaits him.

When he looks up from his reverie, Yayoi is standing next to him, leaning her shoulder onto the fridge and giving him a strange look as if he spaced out for too long or too weirdly for her liking. It has happened before. She hands him her used teacup and he quietly takes hold of it, puts it under the stream of water of the tap before him.

“Soulmates are out there, but there’s not much we can do except live our lives and know that we will bump into each other eventually. I know that when I do find them it will be cosmic, grandiose, explosions in the sky, nirvana, the whole shebang. But until then, I am content with the fireworks that I can manage, you know? There is no rushing nature.”

She gives him a nookie affectionately.

“Maybe you could try not being a complete loser and open yourself up to life a little?”

Ritsuka pushes her hands away in annoyance and she laughs obnoxiously as she leaves him alone with his thoughts in the empty kitchen. He looks down at the bubbles that gathered around his wrists and sighs at nothing in despondency.

Again, nothing out of the ordinary in Ritsuka’s life.

No, the weirdness starts just about 20 minutes later, when Ritsuka emerges from his house to embrace education. He is down two blocks from his house when he starts to feel it.

It’s a freezing January day and Ritsuka tries to hold off the biting cold of the air, hunching inside his coat, counting the minutes until the warmer air of the station will at last engulf him. But he doesn’t get that far.

At first it’s just a sense of anxiety, like a nagging feeling that doesn’t want to leave him. Maybe he left the tap running in the kitchen. Perhaps he left the door open on his way out? Whatever it is, it’s not going away, and his chest begins hurting from the intensity of the feeling. He heard this is what a panic attack feels like, but he wouldn’t know. He had never experienced anything like it to compare.

And then-

It’s like an explosion, a nuclear bomb that obliterates everything inside him. It’s the most overwhelming thing Ritsuka has ever felt in his life, and he has to brace himself on a building so that he doesn’t fall on his face with how much it affects him, the strength of it. It’s a terrible mess of confliction between his mind’s reaction and whatever the stimuli is that is invading him like a virus. It’s-

_-what the hell, what the hell, what the hell is going on here-_

and

_-no-no-no-no-no-no-no, this can’t be happening-no-no-no-no-no, please-_

Ritsuka hyperventilates and tries to untangle himself from the avalanche of feelings but it is to no avail. He is so scared. Suddenly there are all these emotions raging inside him. They are vague and blurry, a rush too fast for him to make sense of anything, too strong for him to be anything but weak at the face of it.

And the feelings they are- so, _so terrible_. So much hurt and heartache.

And they are not his own.

Ritsuka feels the tears running down his cheeks in copious amounts, feels his chest heaving with sobs, his heart breaking into pieces inside his chest. There is nothing he can do but to let himself ride this out, give himself over to infinite sadness, give his mind over to this monstrosity.

It takes him the better part of an hour to calm himself enough to return his breathing to normal, shed the last of his tears, get over the shaking of his limbs. When Ritsuka at last manages to pull himself together, he is unforgivably late to class and in no shape to be social or learn anything whatsoever. He feels utterly drained.

He turns around back home and calls it a sick day. He gets back to a gratefully empty house and immediately goes back under the covers, still a bit shivery from the intensity of the experience.

When Ritsuka finally manages to fall into a fretful sleep, his dreams are haunted by ropes, stools and a red Gibson and the sense of loss in his heart is like wolf’s teeth.


	2. Death with Dignity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Spirit of my silence I can hear you, but I'm afraid to be near you  
>  And I don't know where to begin  
> And I don't know where to begin”_  
> -Death with Dignity by Sufjan Stevens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I challenged myself to use Sufjan Steven songs as titles in this fic because I love his music/thought his song writing fits with the themes of this fic/ and as a cheeky nod to the usage of songs in the anime episode titles. 
> 
> Pro: There are songs like _Mystery of Love_ and _Impossible Soul_ that are easy, proper and poetic enough. Score!  
> Con: The hell am I supposed to do to insert my fav lyrics if their titles are things like _The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!_ (??)
> 
> Oh, Sufjan. I love you to bits, but you are such a weirdo.  
> I will persevere!

Radio silence.

That’s the situation for the next couple of days. Ritsuka wakes up, eats breakfast, washes the dishes, leaves for school. It’s a consolidated pattern, nothing out of the ordinary.

He makes his way to the station, takes the metro, arrives at class, makes himself pay attention lest he falls behind out of inattentiveness. It’s monochromatic, it’s shades of grey, but perfectly ordinary. A copy and paste of how his life ever was, before- before the amplitude of emotions he was able to feel were dialed up to eleven in a complete frenzy.

But now.

Now there is a chasm inside Ritsuka’s chest that is equal parts hauntingly noticeable and terribly grotesque.

Like a balloon was inflated right under his ribs and unapologetically made room for itself, invading and conquering and without remorse, reallocating heart, lungs, his entire life and now that it's popped. Well.

Now only a gruesome gap of nothingness remains.

Ritsuka wakes up before Yayoi barges into his room. He hasn’t slept much anyway, these last nights spent tossing and turning in apprehension. Dreading experiencing the _Incident_ ever again, but also morbidly curious about what the _Incident_ even was, what it meant, what Ritsuka is supposed to do about it.

There is this chasm inside him but what scares him the most is how abruptly it all went away, no follow up or repercussions. Like it was all in his mind with no concrete proof of it ever happening.

These past couple of days Ritsuka made damn sure to pay close attention to his heart, to his mind, to any fluctuation whatsoever. He is pretty sure...no. He is absolutely sure that what he experienced was a Calling. Right?

His Soulmate _Called_ to him. In the most terrible, traumatizing way possible, mind you, but the fact of the matter cannot be negated. Those feelings were not his, the intensity was unprecedented, and then there were the dreams, the red Gibson. Things he hadn’t seen before or experienced but materialized into his mind like memories, as real as his bedroom, his music sheets, his records.

It all felt as real as anything but now, the passage of time and numbness makes him doubt the strength of his conviction and possibly his sanity. It’s like Yayoi said, soulmates always feel each other, right? Perhaps not with the strength and vividness akin to the one of the Incident, but thrumming under their skin or a presence just outside their field of vision, wasn’t that how she phrased it?

Ritsuka feels nothing but the abyss. He hasn’t felt anything alien, no thrumming, no presence, no nudge nor phantom touch in two days and that is. Terrifying.

He unlocks his phone and opens the search bar, let’s the white screen’s glare blind him in the still dim light of dawn but doesn’t type anything. He has an inkling. A hunch. But he is too scared to do anything about it.

School is perfectly ordinary. Everything feels weirdly normal like his whole life spun on its axes but the world remained static around him. Ritsuka scribbles down on his notebook, paying half-hearted attention to his teacher’s explanation on metaphase and anaphase. He looks out the window, chin in hand. There is band practice tomorrow, at least. Something to look forward to. Perhaps he could get Kaji and Haruki to talk to him about their soulmate's experience. Some insight from more experienced people might be what he needs to try and parse through this conflicted mess inside of him.

A suppressed snort of laughter catches his attention and Ritsuka turns back to his classmates to behold the scene that is Itaya doubling over himself, face red with repressed laughter or shame or both. Everyone else staring at him, ranging from amusement to annoyance.

Soulmate Callings. Can happen in any place, at any time. It’s a quite common occurrence, especially with teenagers and their hormonal counterparts, though it’s common courtesy to try and avoid it particularly during class. Bursts of uncontrollable emotion that can break even the most focused student’s concentration, although, I mean. It’s Itaya. The man was not able to concentrate on anything but basketball ever since early middle school years, so.

Itaya excuses himself and runs out of the room, unable to contain a fit of giggles.

The teacher merely rolls her eyes, used to these shenanigans and tries to draw them back to biology.

His classmates, notably the girls, look on to the door Itaya escaped through with something like jealousy in their eyes. Up until a couple of days ago Ritsuka might have secretly shared the feeling but now. Now his feelings on the matter are not so clear.

The three of them have yakisoba bun for lunch, Itaya having already gone to the shop earlier to buy the round, offering Ueki and Ritsuka the packages with a sheepish smile adorning his face. They sit down in a circle and Ritsuka munches down on the food with ferocity while Itaya and Ueki make a little show of punching each other on the shoulder. By this point Ritsuka has given up on trying to understand it.

Itaya at last flops down on his back and lets out a very loud sigh.

“Ugh, she is always like this. I think she hates her English teacher with all her heart and resorts to spending the whole class making ridiculous caricatures of them. And she has to make sure to broadcast every single one of them to me. Soulmate is an amazing artist. If I fail school because I can’t concentrate in class and never manage to get a job, maybe she can support me with the fruit of her labor.”

The way Itaya says it feels like it is directed not only at them but towards inside his mind too, Calling to his soulmate. Whatever Soulmate responds, makes Itaya flush to the root of his hair and he chokes on nothing, starts gasping for air. Ueki and Ritsuka both openly laugh at him obnoxiously.

“Your Soulmate seems like a dumbass.” Ueki says with a trace of fondness in his voice.

Itaya has a hand to his chest, still trying to breathe “She really is.”

Ritsuka can’t help himself “Perfect match, obviously.”

Itaya hits _him_ in the head this time. Ueki falls on the floor with uncontrollable laughter and Ritsuka follows him down, gingerly soothing the region afflicted with his fingertips. _Ouch._

Usually, they would eat outside in their private spot, but the weather is miserably cold and windy. They settle down now eat their food in silence inside the comfort of the gymnasium, Ritsuka’s mind reeling. It’s a conflicting matter to him normally, but ever since the _Incident_ , it has been gnawing at him. But stewing over the matter by himself hasn't helped him much so far. He steels himself and just goes for it.

“How do you….Call a Soulmate?”

Their surprise is palpable. It’s been standard protocol so far that the matter of Soulmates was somewhat verboten with Ritsuka. Itaya rubs his own neck, a pensive expression on his face.

“Oh, hum. It’s difficult to explain….It’s like those mechanical things your body just takes over and you don’t even remember doing them. That's how automatic they are, you know?”

Ueki hums in agreement “Like walking.”

Itaya nods enthusiastically in his direction “Yeah. Or breathing.”

“Or being a complete dumbass-”

This time the slap to the head is expected.

Itaya takes it upon himself to not let the conversation derail “Anyway. Yeah. It’s like….you reach your mind towards the place you can feel them. And then you...kinda knock? And if they want to, they let you in. Or if you are very obnoxious about it they have no choice but to let you in anyway, to scream at you that you are annoying them and kicking you out for a timeout. At least that’s my experience.”

Ueki brings a hand to clutch at his chest in mocking earnestness “Your love is beautiful. Truly inspiring, really. Brings tears to my eyes.”

“Fuck off. You are just jealous cause your communication with your Soulmate hasn't evolved past finger paintings like you are a couple of kindergartens.”

They seem ready to get into yet another bout of roughhousing when Itaya pulls back, focusing on Ritsuka with a weird, attentive look on his face that Ritsuka doesn’t like one bit. He looks away with a blush, regretting everything.

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, hum. No reason. Curiosity. Hmm, I think I will get a shut eye before the next class. Didn’t sleep great last night. Thanks for lunch!”

Ritsuka scrambles to get away before they can rope him back into honesty. He goes through the double doors until he reaches his napping spot, the staircase bright with the noon sun. He lays down on the steps, closes his eyes and breathes deep. In and out. In and out. He has a moment of confliction but he figures he should just go for it. Now is as good a time as any.

He tries to imagine it, to conceptualize it into something real. The door inside his mind, the latch. He is able to conjure something suitable, a red door, the same shade of red as the Gibson from his dream. When his hand feels for the latch, the metal is warm to his skin, like the steps of the staircase heated under the noon sun exposure. Once more he breathes in, out. Tries for the latch. It opens smoothly under his shaky grip.

The other side is a sea of darkness, a black hole and Ritsuka can’t see anything. He feels stupid, he feels utterly stupid and clueless about all this, but he gives it a try, because why the hell not. He came all the way here, anyway, might as well give his best. Ritsuka hates feeling incompetent. He also hates how helpless he has been feeling these days, how passive he has been in dealing with this situation.

He tightens his grip on the latch and steels himself, tries to feel welcoming, tries to make himself open to connection, to emotion, to whatever a Soulmate might need from him.

“Hello? Anyone? Can you hear me?”

Ritsuka waits for a moment at his makeshift door, taps his fingertips at the the warm wood in frustration. Lingers at his feeble attempt of a Calling but it’s fruitless, to no avail. Nothing happens, and he feels like an idiot for thinking he would be able to handle this.

He stays there utterly alone and nothing and no one calls back to him.

Later Ritsuka finds himself sitting on his desk, as he focuses on the sketch he has been working on since dinner. He hums a new riff has been slowly developing in his mind the last couple of days, pencil moving thoughtfully on paper.

He sketches a red Gibson on his notebook, trying to pick on the little particularities that felt so detailed in those dreams but scattered away by the weight of reality. He feels like he is grasping at the seams of something that eludes him completely, something that is on the tip of his tongue but also unreachable. It’s a constricting feeling, like he is losing a battle here and he is both his own worst enemy and last man standing. It falls up to him to immortalize whatever he has from those arid memories.

“The Telecaster is not keeping up with your talent, is that it?”

His father looms on the doorway, fingers raised, gently waiting to be recognized. Ritsuka was so absorbed in his own internal whirlwind that he didn’t notice his arrival. He smiles at his father and signals for him to come in.

“Nah, the Telecaster is perfect. I will show you later with the new song Kaji, Haruki and I have been working on. I think you will like our sound.”

“I’m sure I will. I always do. Raised you well, haven’t I?” His father laughs good-heartedly, but his eyes turn serious as he regards the sketch again, a pregnant silence growing between them. Ritsuka turns his glance to the drawing as well and taps his fingers on the table in an anxious pattern.

“Yeah. No, this is just something that has been on my mind these days.”

His father nods pensively, still waiting for his son to just let out whatever it is that is bothering him. Damn perceptive people, honestly. Ritsuka is so not ready for this conversation. He inhales deeply and tries it anyway.

“Father, can I ask you something personal?”

“Sure thing, son. You’ve been awfully pensive these days. What is it that is on your mind?”

There is no way to phrase what has been on his mind nicely, is there?

“How was it for you when….when mom died?” Ritsuka flinches, but it’s out now. There’s no reclaiming it.

His father’s eyes widen in surprise behind the lenses of his glasses “Oh. Hum. I was not expecting that.”

“I’m sorry.” Ritsuka looks back down in shame. There are about a handful of tactful ways to approach this matter. And then there is the way that Ritsuka chooses. What an ass.

“No, it’s ok. It’s just…It’s been a long time since I thought about it.”

When Ritsuka manages to glance back up again his father is leaning onto his wardrobe, a far away look on his face. He must find something in his reverie because he returns from it and back to Ritsuka in a beat, a glint on his eyes.

“You remember how she was like, right? So artistic. You and your sister got it all from her really, I was never like that. I mean, I can play the guitar as well as the next guy, but I never….Anyway. They were a funny thing, our Callings. She understood my speech and words just fine, but it was like she was too impatient and thought that coherent speech took way too long to express herself. She mostly communicated with shapes, colors and impressions. Colors, especially, were her favorite. Our family was this specific shade of blue, I couldn’t tell you now which exactly. She made them sound so obviously different.” He chuckled with affection “You don’t know how long it took me to catch up with her. Embarrassingly long. She would tease me relentlessly.”

His eyes got that nostalgic glint to them, as if lost in the fondest of memories. Ritsuka felt something bittersweet unfurling inside him. He wanted that. He really did.

His father cleared his throat, sobering up a degree. Ritsuka braced himself for impact.

“The day she died. Well. It was fast, you know that from the reports of the crash. It was almost instant. But…I felt it. I really did and it was the most terrifying thing in my life. The most intense thing too. And then it was over and there was this…hole in my heart that she used to occupy, you know? And to this day….I. I don’t see that shade of blue that clearly. Weird, right?”

His tone is carefully light, but his eyes betray infinite sadness. Ritsuka can’t help it but stand up and hug him and his father hugs him right back just as tightly. It’s exactly what he most feared. And Ritsuka gulps down tears that want to escape him, can’t help himself because.

Because there is a distinct possibility that he felt his Soulmate die before he ever even met them.


End file.
